Paper printing machinery such as a printing press is currently controlled by an operator through control buttons that control the various functioning of the machine and the operator typically logs on paper any time spent repairing the machine if production efficiency for the particular printing job is to be measured. There is a current trend in the industry, however, to incorporate microprocessors into the machine in order to monitor and record "real time" data with respect to the jobs and projects being performed by the machines, i.e., use of a microprocessor to monitor and record job and project data to determine on demand current job and project running times, prepress setup times, idle times, and down times due to maintenance, employee breaks, and malfunctions. The real time data subsequently can be used with respect to a particular machine or a group of machines to immediately compute analytical benchmarks such as production efficiency. This incorporation of a microprocessor into a production machine for this purpose is known in the industry as a direct machine interface (DMI).
Because the average education of many machine operators includes only a high school education at best, especially in the paper printing industry, the incorporation of computers into these machines often requires extensive education of the operators with respect to the operation of the microprocessors through keypad controllers. For instance, if a web break occurs in a machine such as a printing press, the operator must be trained to indicate on the keypad that the machine has stopped because of a web break, as opposed to, for example, a roll change, a cylinder change, or an ink problem.
Currently there is a need in the paper printing industry for a simple method and corresponding keypad by which an operator can indicate to a microprocessor associated with a paper printing machine the relevant information needed by the microprocessor for properly recording real time data. Furthermore, there is a need for a simple method and corresponding keypad by which operators can be conditioned to efficiently indicate the relevant information to a microprocessor for recording real time data while minimizing the time required to educate the operators.